Mmmm good question. Funny you mention that – I was teaching French last summer to this group of kids from Mexico, and as soon as they finally got the spelling of my name right, they ALL added me on FB. I was flooded by friend requests of Mexican kids I barely even knew!

Having taught kids for a long time, and for still remembering what it’s like to be a kid, they just want to be cool. Being ‘friends’ with the cool music teacher is what ‘being cool’ is all about for them.
I remember when I was 10 years old and my favorite piano teacher, who was 16 at the time, called my house and asked to talk to ME instead of my parents to reschedule a lesson. I thought I was the coolest person on earth, because I looked up to her and wanted to be exactly like her. For them, being friends on Facebook is kind of the same deal, they feel that they are the cool kids because they’re ‘hanging out’ with the cool music guy.

The thing is, it IS dangerous. Especially with all those stories about little kids and priests and what not. (this is not meant to be offending….but from where I’m from, its all over the news these days).
If you are freelancing and these are your private students, I guess it could be OK to add them as friends if your profile is free of pictures of you drinking at the last wild party you were at. But if these are kids that you teach in an academic setting, or a proper school, I’d stay clear of it. Parents don’t know you and often won’t have the same relationship they have with you when you teach their kids at home, so it could be seen as being wrong for many people.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s hard to say no to them, because they really just look up to you and want to be your friend BUT from a parent standpoint it could be odd to see your child befriending grown men (and women) on the internet. It’s a judgement call…I personally would say no to all students. I like to keep my respect (so they don’t cancel their lessons and feel that they have a free pass with me from now on haha)

Just figure out a clever way to answer to that trumpet player kid when he asks you in class why you haven’t confirmed the Facebook request yet…

I would suggest that if you do friend them, you learn how to use Facebook’s settings. For instance, you can create groups of your friends, and set the privacy to your various posts to “Everyone, except Students” or some such.

You can also use such groups to send messages, so you could send a message to all your students saying “there will be no lessons the week of [dates]. Lessons will resume on [date].” At least, you used to be able to do that. I hope you still can.

To a lot of that generation, FB is simply a communication tool. Many of them use it [i]instead of[/i] email.

I’m with Dave. Only friend people that you’d be OK with them seeing everything you post (or are tagged in) because accidents happen.

A better option might be to create a Page where people can “like” you. It’s far easier to regulate what happens in that space.

Because FB is such a big communication tool, I’m reluctant to say you should not do it at all. I have some suggestions.

The first is to see if a FB page will do. However, the limitations of this might prevent what you need. I think you will be able to send them messages, but they might not be able to send you ones (this might be a good thing).

The second would be to create a Group. This would allow you and your students to “talk amongst yourselves” as it were.

The third would be to create a second personal profile as the teacher. Make it abundantly clear what the purpose of this one is. Don’t hide it with too much privacy settings, as you’d want parents and whoever to know that you’re not up to anything. This would hold true for the above suggestions as well.

Just some early morning thoughts.